Middle East latest: Death of Zomi Franckom not expected to be part of IDF criminal probes into Gaza killings

Israel’s military said Wednesday it would launch criminal investigations into two high-profile attacks on Palestinians during the war in Gaza, including the killings of 5-year-old Hind Rajab and her family and of 15 Palestinian paramedics.

However, the military said it would not launch criminal investigations into three other attacks that killed aid workers from World Central Kitchen - including Australian woman Lalzawmi “Zomi” Frankcom - and Doctors Without Borders.

It released the news in a statement that said it had completed reviews of 150 incidents of troop conduct in Gaza and made decisions on five cases.

The statement did not mention other high-profile killings that the military has pledged to investigate throughout the war. It did not mention the Israeli strikes on a hospital in southern Gaza that killed five journalists in August 2025, including Mariam Dagga, a visual journalist who freelanced for The Associated Press and other news organizations.

Both the killing of Rajab in February 2024 and the killing of 15 Palestinian medics in May 2025 gained international attention.

Rajab was killed alongside her relatives while trying to flee Gaza City amid an Israeli offensive. Israeli troops opened fire on a vehicle carrying Hind and four of her cousins and her aunt and uncle. Hind’s cousin, 15-year-old Layan Hamada, called the Palestinian Red Crescent paramedic center, telling them that a tank was approaching and that her family had been killed. Seconds later, more gunshots were heard, and Layan’s screaming stopped, according to the Red Crescent recording of the call.

Hind was the sole survivor in the car. The Red Crescent stayed in contact with her as they tried to get permission from the military to rescue her. Contact was lost. Hind, her five relatives and two medics were found dead 12 days later.

The 15 paramedics were killed when Israeli troops opened fire on their vehicles in the southern city of Rafah, then buried them in a mass grave. Troops shot at a first ambulance that was driving to retrieve casualties from an Israeli offensive, then fired on several other emergency vehicles that went out to look for the first one, according to phone footage and the sole survivor of the shootings.

Troops then bulldozed over the bodies along with their mangled vehicles, burying them in a mass grave. U.N. and rescue workers were only able to reach the site a week later to dig out the bodies.

The Israeli military initially said it opened fire because the vehicles were “advancing suspiciously” on nearby troops without headlights or emergency signals. But it backtracked from that account after the footage emerged, showing the Red Crescent and Civil Defence teams driving slowly with their emergency vehicle lights flashing and logos visible.

“We are not obligated to prove the truth because it is already proven to the whole world,” Eid Azizi, a Palestinian Red Crescent spokesperson, told the Associated Press in a phone call. “We shouldn’t have reached this point if they respected and followed the international humanitarian law.”

However, the criminal probes will not extend to the April 2024 incident in which a humanitarian convoy of World Central Kitchen vehicles working to distribute food in Gaza was attacked in an Israeli air strike.

At the time IDF troops believed the convoy of vehicles was being hijacked by Hamas. Frankcom, 43, was killed alongside six other aid workers during the incident.

At the time Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong refused to concede the deaths were a terrible accident and sought criminal charges. “Zomi Frankcom and her colleagues were killed in an intentional strike by the IDF,” she said.

Israel’s defence force has already conducted an investigation into the deaths of Frankcom and her six colleagues, which resulted in two officers being dismissed and three others being reprimanded.

However, on Wednesday, in announcing the launch of its two major criminal probes, the IDF said it had cleared its personnel of any criminal wrongdoing in the World Central Kitchen incident.

The Jerusalem Post reported that the IDF decided to uphold the prior decision of then-IDF chief Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi “that while tragic, the errors should lead to disciplinary measures, but were not a crime”.